From Newsgroup: rec.games.trivia

This quiz is over, and after applying my usual tie-breaker - a subjective judgement of the incorrect answers (which I forgot to include in my post
this time) - I declare Joshua Kreitzer as the winner, congratulations!

Here is the scoreboard:

! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Total
! === ================================================
Joshua K ! 1 - 1 1 1 1 - - - 1 1 - 7
Dan B ! 1 - 1 1 1 1 - 1 - - 1 - 7
Dan T ! 1 - 1 - 1 - - - - 1 1 - 5
Pete G ! 1 - - - 1 1 - - - - 1 - 4
Mark B ! - - 1 - - - - - - 1 1 - 3

1. What is kompromat?

A Russian term for "compromising material", used to have hold on someone.
The material may very well be faked, or be produced with help of a honey
trap or similar. There have been speculations that Putin has some good kompromat on Donald Trump.

2. This country takes its name after a river that roughly cuts the
country in two halves by area. However, 95% of the population lives
east of the river. Which country is this?

Paraguay.

Niger was a popular answer, but the river runs through the westernmost parts
of the country and the western slice is hardly 10 % of the total area.

As for the answer Democratic Republic of Congo, that's a correct answer,
but it was the wrong question.

3. David Cornwell became famous for writing a number of popular espionage
novels using which pseudonym?

John Le Carro.

4. ASEAN is a little bit like the EU for south-east Asia. They recently
welcomed their 11th member, one of the lesser countries in the region.
Which country?

Timor-Leste (East Timor)

5. "Fanfare for the Common Man" is a work of which American composer?

Aaron Copland

Also interpreted by Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

6. Lando Norris is this year's champion in which prestigious - and
expensive - sport?

Formula-One Racing.

7. M23 is a rebel group active in an African country and sponsored by
another country. Name any of the two countries.

M23 is making a mess in north-eastern parts of the Democratic Republic
of Congo with cheerful support from Rwanda.

8. If you are in a Japanese Izakaya, what might your aim be?

Eat, drink and socialise.

An izakaya can be described as a Japanese pub. If you read Wikipedia,
you can get the impression that drinking is the main focus, and the
bites you get are of the lighter kind, but that is not really true.
Or, well, the dishes are not really full size, but you would typically
order more than one of them.

Wikipedia also suggests that westerners may find it difficult to order in
an izakaya. I will have to disagree. On my recent trip, I visited several,
and in about everyone I could order from a screen. Either there was a
tablet at the table, with or without English translations, but always
with pictures. Or there was a QR-code, I could scan with my phone, and
in the phone, Google Translate could assist.

I ruled "drinking tea" as incorrect. You can certainly get a cup of tea
in an izakaya, but this is not where you would go if that is all you want.
But in the end, this was the best incorrect answer, so Joshua's tea-
drinking gave him the victory nevertheless.

9. The Canadian indie artist Tamara Lindeman makes records using
which band name?

The Weather Station.

OK, I'm maybe not so surprised that this was a stumper.

10. If you take the French way of saying the number 99 and translate
it to English piece by piece, what do you get? (There are some
regional variations, but I'm looking for the normal form used
all over France.)

Four-twenty-ten-nine (Quatre-vingt dixneuf).

There are varieties of French where they use the more straightforward novante-neuf, but that was not what I was looking for.

11. This architect passed away just a few days ago. His most renowned
work is said to be the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. What was his name?

Frank Gehry

12. Refer to https://www.sommarskog.se/temp/Q12.jpg. The picture is from
which European capital city?

Stockholm. That's the Old Town. You can see the royal palace to the right.

I thought this would be a giveaway. Not that I expected everyone to
recognise the scene, but it seemed like the obvious guess, given my
origin. It seems that all entrants outsmarted themselves by thinking
"He can't do that".


For fun, I gave all the questions to the AI in Google. I did however
not tell it about the rule "use only your own knowledge". It got all
answers, save for #10 where it just left a blank. For the last question,
it made clear that it used sources: It checked the rest of my web site
and found lots of references to Stockholm. And the AI is to naNve to
suspect a trap.

Thanks to everyone for playing!

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